Endal - Work As A Service Dog

Work As A Service Dog

Endal was able to respond to over one hundred instructions as well as a very large number ("hundreds") of signed commands. He could retrieve items from supermarket shelves, operate buttons and switches, and load and empty a washing machine. He was able to put a card into a cash machine, retrieve the card when the process was complete, and return the card to a wallet.

"When I couldn’t talk, he learned sign language – if I touched my head I wanted my hat, if I touched my face it was for the razor. He learned hundreds of commands in signing. Eventually one day, in this very silent world we lived in, I grunted. That was like an electric shock going through him, he was so excited. They said I’d never speak again, but Endal just dragged the speech out of me." Able Magazine.

The above Able Magazine article continues by noting that "Over the years, Endal has learned to pull the plug out of the bath before going for help if Allen falls unconscious whilst bathing, and is able to put Allen in the recovery position, hit the emergency button on the telephone and summon help ... Endal has learned how to use ATM's as well as Chip and pin machines, as well as helping out with the shopping, opening train doors, operating lifts, unloading the washing machine and more typical doggie skills like getting the paper."

Parton states that Endal's ability to comprehend his wishes and needs showed when they first met, and was responsible for helping him recover from the initial deep depression and trauma caused by his disability.

Endal came again to national attention in a 2001 incident, when Allen was knocked out of his wheelchair by a passing car. Endal pulled Allen, who was unconscious, into the recovery position, retrieved his mobile phone from beneath the car, fetched a blanket and covered him, barked at nearby dwellings for assistance, and then ran to a nearby hotel to obtain help.

Endal is also:

  • The first dog to ride on the London Eye.
  • The first dog known to be able to operate an ATM card, including both card insertion and card removal.

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Famous quotes containing the words work, service and/or dog:

    “Nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst of them in reckless defiance; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands.”
    —John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    “The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)